There is a discrepancy between what consumers explicitly declare and what really drives their behaviour – we all know about this gap, but it was always just beyond the grasp of our research. This discrepancy has been extensively studied by Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and a Nobel Prize winner. He has distinguished two mental modalities: System 1, which operates automatically and originates impressions/emotions and System 2, which operates consciously and consists of rational reasoning (Kahneman, 2011).
SYSTEM 1 - implicit | SYSTEM 2 - explicit |
emotional | rational |
impulsive | conscious |
automatic | verbal |
subconscious experiences | declarative |
motives and attitudes | opinions |
Thanks to this distinction we can better understand consumers and reveal more detailed image of their motives by adding measures of emotions to the traditional measures of rational thinking. This is an ultimate goal of multiple neuroscientific methods and Reaction Time is the tool allowing to reach it. Assessing automatic reactions via Reaction Time method allows us to sharpen research findings and to provide more accurate answers.
